Less than a week after a tribal casino compact was submitted to the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Patrick administration is urging federal officials to give “early and expeditious approval” to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s pending application to have land in Taunton and Mashpee taken into trust.

Less than a week after a tribal casino compact was submitted to the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Patrick administration is urging federal officials to give “early and expeditious approval” to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s pending application to have land in Taunton and Mashpee taken into trust.

The request comes in the form of a Sept. 4 letter from Gov. Deval Patrick’s chief legal counsel, Mark A. Reilly.

The Mashpee, who are federally recognized but are currently without sovereign land, are seeking to build a tribal casino on 146 acres in East Taunton. In order to build a casino under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the facility would have to be built on tribal land that is held in trust by the Secretary of the Interior.

Some have questioned whether the Mashpee meet the requirements to have land taken into trust. In the 2009 Carcieri vs. Salazar decision, the Supreme Court ruled that only a tribe under federal jurisdiction before 1934 can have land taken in trust for the purpose of casino gambling.

The Mashpee didn’t get federal recognition until 2007, but have maintained that they were under federal jurisdiction prior to that.

The Massachusetts expanded gambling law allows for the state to license up to three casinos, one in each of three regions. Commercial bids for the southeastern region, however, were frozen out to give the Mashpee an exclusive first shot at the local casino market.

Patrick has explained that the rationale behind that provision was that the Mashpee, a federally recognized tribe, have a right under federal law to open a casino on sovereign tribal land. He has said he doesn’t think the market could handle a fourth casino in Massachusetts without suffering from over saturation.

If the Massachusetts Gaming Commission determines that the Mashpee do not have a reasonable chance of having the land taken in trust, the southeastern region can be opened up to commercial bidding for a casino license, according to the state law.